Chapter 339: The Hierophant and the Swarmlord
If humanity could weaken the Shadow in the Warp and easily bring in dozens of warships, then couldn't they bring in even more later? The pressure on the Hive Mind multiplied.
But just as the Hive Mind was turning its attention to the void, a change on the surface of Iphix instantly dragged its gaze back down. It no longer even considered what had just happened in the warp.
It had found her. Zagara, the Zerg synapse-creature it had been hunting for so long, had emerged from her hiding place and had reappeared on the surface of Iphix. She was accompanied by countless Zerg, and all the Brutalisks were now protecting her. This time, the Zerg had deployed almost all of their elite forces. A sea of Zerg was launching an assault on the area occupied by the Tyranids on Iphix. Zagara even led all the Zerg in a roar toward the sky, as if in provocation.
Its advantage in the void was continuously weakening. The Norn-Queen could not accept the loss of its advantage on the ground as well. It was too difficult to seize a landing zone that could provide biomass from the Zerg's grasp.
Seeing this, the Hive Mind no longer cared about the battle in the void. Let the bio-fleets be lost. Let the human reinforcements come. As long as it could kill Zagara before more enemies arrived, it would still win. It believed that the Zerg would fall into chaos and lose their command. Without coordination, the Zerg would no longer be a match for the Tyranids. It could still be the final victor and obtain everything. With that biomass, it would devour everything in this star system.
Conversely, if it continued to delay, the Tyranid tendril could fall into a state of damnation. Maintaining such a massive fleet of Tyranid bio-ships was not without cost. Every second, just maintaining their existence, their movement, and their activity, consumed a massive amount of biomass.
And that wasn't the Norn-Queen's only headache. While launching its assault in the void, Lucan had also used ten Gorgons to forcibly deploy two Raider regiments and the Blood Ravens onto the planet's surface. However, the number of Tyranid bio-ships in orbit was simply too great. The Gorgons that had jumped into low orbit were immediately attacked. Having seen this tactic once before over Asphodel, the Tyranids were now prepared.
Five of the Gorgons, acting as a screen and decoy, were entangled by predator-tendrils and could only watch as they were destroyed. But a portion of the Gorgons had successfully broken through and completed the troop deployment. They would now provide support for the ground war from within the planet's orbit.
The Norn-Queen had always thought the Zerg were a native species, because their Leviathans had never appeared on the battlefield. This had led the Hive Mind to regard them as a native species with no interstellar travel capability. But now, seeing human troops in the midst of the Zerg swarm, completely unmolested, the Hive Mind realized the truth: the Zerg were not a native species at all! They were in league with the humans!
At this moment, Leviathan's pressure alarm was finally triggered. The Hive Mind began to implement its final battle plan.
With the activation of the alarm, the Norn-Queen within the Hive Ship also became agitated. The translucent tendrils connected to its spine began to issue commands to the entire Leviathan tendril.
A massive number of spore-pods once again rained down into the area of Iphix occupied by the Tyranids. Under orders, countless Tyranids willingly walked into the digestion pools, allowing the digestive fluids to completely break down their bodies. They were broken down into the purest biomass and then re-fused.
The next second, the ground of Iphix began to tremble. The digestive fluid in four giant pools churned violently. And from them, four giant Tyranid creatures, their bodies covered in tendrils, barbs, and living weapons, their height exceeding that of a Warlord Titan, crawled out.
The Tyranids' titan-class bio-weapon, the Hierophant, had finally appeared on the battlefield. Each Hierophant required an incalculable amount of biomass to create. Its carapace could even withstand the disintegration rays of the Necrons; conventional artillery could hardly cause it any damage. For any Tyranid tendril fleet, this was not a unit that could be easily produced.
And the killing machine the Norn-Queen had been brewing was not just this. A Tyranid creature, more than twice the size of a Hive Tyrant, lay quietly in the mothership. This body was the purest and most powerful of weapons. The transparent tendrils from the Norn-Queen were connected to it.
As the Norn-Queen sent a request to the Great Devourer, a memory and a soul crossed time and space, traveling along the Hive Mind to the Leviathan tendril, and was then injected into the husk before it via the psychic network.
This consciousness was the Tyranids' ultimate single-combat weapon: the Swarmlord.
The consciousness and mind of the Swarmlord did not exist permanently within a single tendril fleet. It was more like a pressure alarm for every Tyranid tendril. Whenever a tendril could no longer achieve victory through conventional tactics, or when the entire tendril was facing a moment of life and death, only then would it be summoned. And the situation in the Cryptus System had clearly triggered this special Tyranid mechanism.
Seeing the Swarmlord stand up, the Norn-Queen no longer conserved biomass. Zagara had appeared again, and it absolutely could not let her get away. Leviathan could not afford to continue this war of attrition in this system. It retained only the most basic synapse-creatures for each bio-ship and ground unit, and even pulled the immortal consciousnesses of all the Hive Tyrants on the battlefield and gathered them together.
One by one, the bodies of Hive Tyrants were produced, their consciousnesses injected, and they gathered at the side of the Swarmlord. The Swarmlord would lead all of Leviathan's Hive Tyrants in a decapitation strike against Zagara.
One after another, the Tyranid bio-ships began to look withered and shrunken. This was the sign of exhaustion after consuming too much of their own biomass. The Norn-Queen had even broken down and siphoned off the biomass of these warships themselves to create more ground troops.
As more and more Hive Tyrants gathered at the side of the Swarmlord, they followed him into a series of giant spore-pods.
When Zagara saw the Hierophants walking toward her in the distance, and the abnormally large spore-pods falling from the sky, she knew the plan had succeeded.
"Abathur... you better not let me die."
"The Queen will be at your side, Zagara."
Hearing Abathur's words, Zagara roared, "For the Queen of Blades!"
The sky-full of pods carrying the Swarmlord's forces smashed into the Zerg swarm surrounding Zagara. Countless smaller Tyranid units charged out first, beginning a meat grinder with the surrounding Zerg. And the Swarmlord, flanked by a large number of Hive Tyrants, also charged out, waving his four biological sabers.
The Hive Mind no longer cared if the Creep on the ground would absorb the biomass of these fallen Tyranids. All it wanted to do now was to decapitate Zagara, at any cost.
The attack speed displayed by the Swarmlord was not something a creature of its size should possess. Two Brutalisks that tried to stop him were instantly hacked to pieces. In both strength and agility, he was in a state of overwhelming dominance. The spines and acid of the Hydralisks and Roaches could not even penetrate his chitinous armor.
The Raider forces mixed in with the Zerg also continuously fired on him, but with little effect. Apart from not having any large-scale psychic destructive ability, the Swarmlord was practically a pentagonal warrior. But while he had no psychic destructive ability, the dozen Zoanthropes that had joined the battle with him did.
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